Chapter 17: Balance of Nature

He lay between white sheets, and the stench of burning things was everywhere, in the air that he breathed, in the clean white covers that were over him. His own flesh seemed to smell of it.

He was not quite sure if he were still in a world of dreams or if this were real. It was a golden world; the snow-covered ground beyond the window was gilded with rich, yellow light. He remembered something about such light that was not pleasant. He had forgotten just what it was.

Maria Larsen stood at the foot of his bed. She smiled as his eyes opened. “Hello, Ken,” she said. “I’ve been waiting so long. I’ve been afraid you’d never wake up.”

“Tom Doyle,” he said. “Did you find Tom Doyle?”

Maria frowned. “I don’t know who you mean!”

“You haven’t found his family yet?” Ken cried, struggling to rise in the bed. “Go and find them right now. I promised Tom Doyle I’d do it.”

Maria approached and pushed him gently back upon the pillow, drawing the covers over him once more. “Tell me about Tom Doyle,” she said. “You’ve never told me who he is.”

It seemed utterly stupid for her not to know, but Ken patiently told her about Doyle’s Service, the best little station in the world, at the corner of First and Green. “I told Tom I’d take care of them,” he said. “Now go and bring them here!”

“Ken,” Maria said, “all the nomads who escaped, and there weren’t many, retreated around the south end of town and picked up the women and children they’d left there. They moved on south. That was 3 days ago. We’ve no idea where they’ve gone.”

Ken tried to rise again against her struggles to hold him down. “They couldn’t have gone so far that a man on horseback couldn’t find them! Why won’t you help me? I promised I’d see to it!”

He lay back weakly, covering his face with his arm. “Go and find Tom Doyle,” he said. In detail he described where he had left the man. “You don’t believe what I’m saying. Get Tom Doyle and he’ll tell you it’s the truth.”

“He wouldn’t be there now. All the wounded, including the nomads, have been moved to homes where they are being cared for. The dead, both theirs and ours, have been burned and their ashes buried.”

“Do what I tell you!” Ken implored.

With bewilderment and fear on her face, Maria stood back from the bed and looked at Ken’s troubled face. Then quietly she stole from the room and shut the door behind her.

He had been overworking himself for weeks, Dr. Adams was saying, and had been living on a poor diet that would scarcely keep a medium-sized pup going.

“Then you had a shock, the kind of shock that shakes a man to his very roots. Now you’re on your way up again.”

Ken glanced about the room. It seemed normal now and there was only a great emptiness within him to replace the frantic urgency he remembered.

“What you’re trying to say, Doc, is that I went off my rocker for a while.”

Dr. Adams smiled. “If you want to put it that way. However, you’re fine now.”

Ken stared at the ceiling for a few moments. “Will you still say so if I ask again about Tom Doyle?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Was he found?”

“No. Maria actually tried to find him for you. I’m afraid your Tom Doyle was among the dead.”

“I killed him.”

“We killed a lot of them--and they killed a lot of our people.”

“How did it end?” asked Ken. “I remember the darkness and just wandering around the streets shooting, but I don’t know what I hit or where I went.”

“That’s the way it ended,” said Dr. Adams. “House-to-house street fighting, and we won. Don’t ask me how. You were in a sector that was cut off almost as soon as you entered it. Even where communication was maintained things were nearly as chaotic.

“Johnson says it was just plain, dumb luck. Hilliard says he doesn’t think it really happened. Dr. Aylesworth calls it a miracle, a gift and a blessing that shows we’re meant to survive. Most of the rest of us are willing to look at it his way.”

“I could do something for Tom Doyle,” Ken said finally. “He was a decent guy. They all were, once. I could find his wife and children.”

The doctor shook his head. “All who are left of that group of nomads are going to die. We’ve got to let them die, just as we let the people in Chicago and Berkeley and ten thousand other towns die. We have no more power to save Tom Doyle’s family than we had to save them.”

“We’re taking care of the nomad wounded! We could do as much for just one woman and two kids!”

“We’re helping the wounded until they get on their feet,” Dr. Adams said quietly. “Then they’ll be sent on--to wherever they came from.”

Ken stared at him.

“There is only one thing we could never forgive ourselves for,” the doctor continued. “That one thing would be letting the Earth itself die. As long as there are people alive who can fight the comet, we still have a chance. Nothing else in the whole world matters now. Don’t you see there is no other purpose in keeping Mayfield alive except to support the few people who understand the dust and can fight it? Beyond that, Mayfield has no more right to live than any other town that has already died. But Mayfield has to stay alive to keep you and your father and the others like you fighting the dust.”

Dr. Adams gave permission for Ken to be out of bed for a short time. He tried, after the doctor had left, and almost fell on his face. The whole world seemed to spin in enormous cart wheels. He persisted though, and 2 hours later he was making his way slowly up College Hill with the help of Maria who walked beside him and lent her arm for support.

At the top of the hill they stopped and turned for a look at the valley below them. The ruin was plain to see in spite of the snow cover. A third of the town had been completely burned. At the old skating rink, workmen were clawing through the debris for usable remains of food. A miserably small pile of items showed the extent of their success.

Curls of smoke still rose from the ashes, and the nauseating smell of death and burning floated over the whole valley.

Of his own experience Ken felt only a numbing confusion as yet. He thought he should feel like a fool for his collapse at the height of the battle, but he did not. He felt as if he had marched to the absolute edge of human endurance and had looked to the dark pit below.

He turned to Maria. “I’ll be okay now. It’s time for you to get back to the radio station. Tell them what has happened and get their reports. I’ll see you tonight.”

It seemed a long time since he had last been in the laboratory. The workers were once more in the midst of their thousands of trials and failures to produce a colloidal, non-poisonous form of the decontaminant, which could be infused in the atmosphere of the world to destroy the comet dust.

He stayed until his father left at 7 o’clock, and they went home together. He still had to depend on someone else for assistance on the steep and slippery hill.

When they reached home Maria had a lengthy report ready from the Pasadena people, and one from Schenectady.

Professor Maddox read the reports at the dinner table. He passed the sheets to Professor Larsen as he finished them. Ken saw he was not reading with his usual thorough analysis. When he had finished he returned to his eating with perfunctory motions.

“Anything new?” Ken asked.

“The same old story. A thousand hours of experiments, and no success. I feel we’re all on the wrong track, trying to perfect a chemical colloid, based on the decontaminant, which will destroy the dust. I feel that nothing’s going to come of it.”

Ken said, “I had a crazy dream the other day while Dr. Adams had me under drugs. I had almost forgotten it. I dreamed I was walking along the street and had a special kind of flashlight in my hand. When I came to a car that wouldn’t run, standing by the curb, I turned the beam of the flashlight on it. Then whoever owned it could step in and drive away. After I had done that to all the cars in Mayfield I turned it on the sky and just kept flashing it back and forth and the comet dust fell down like ashes and the air was clean.”

Professor Maddox smiled. “A nice dream! I wish we could make it come true. I’m afraid that idea will have to go back to the pages of your science fiction, where it probably came from in the first place.”

“Dad, I’m serious!” Ken said earnestly.

“About making a magic flashlight?” His father was almost sarcastic, which revealed the extent of his exhaustion, Ken thought. He was never like that.

“What I’m trying to say is that there are other ways to precipitate colloids. We haven’t even given any thought to them. Colloids can be precipitated by heat, by pressure, by vibration. Maybe a dozen other ways that I don’t know anything about.

“Maybe some kind of physical means, rather than chemical, is the answer to our problem. Why don’t we let Pasadena and the other labs go on with the chemical approach but let us do some work on possible physical means?”

Professor Maddox sat very still. His glance passed from Ken to Professor Larsen. The latter nodded. “I think we have indeed been foolish in ignoring this possibility up to now. I wonder if Ken hasn’t got a very good thought there.”

“Have you anything specific to suggest?” Ken’s father asked.

“Well, I’ve been wondering about supersonic methods. I know that a supersonic beam can be used for coagulation and precipitation.”

“It would depend on the size of the colloidal particles, and on the frequency of the wave, wouldn’t it? Perhaps we could find a frequency that would precipitate the dust, but I wonder if we wouldn’t have the same problem as with mechanical treatment of the Earth’s atmosphere. Even if we succeeded on a laboratory scale, how could it be applied on a practical, worldwide scale?”

“I don’t know,” said Ken. “It may not work out, but I think it’s worth trying.”